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Borrowing scenery - Japanese art of shakkei - Brief Article
Country Living Gardener , Dec, 2001
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Capture a neighboring vista with these creative techniques
Imagine that you could, without cost, extend your garden out over the surrounding countryside--perhaps to include the meadow next door, even as far as the eye can see. Imagine, too, that while doing so you could incorporate only the picturesque areas, editing out all the rest. No doubt this does sound like a fantasy. But the fact is, you can have all of this if you learn to employ the Japanese art of shakkei, that is "borrowing scenery."
The name may be exotic, but the techniques involved are quite simple. Essentially, what the scenery borrowers do is to select the view that they admire, frame it, and then include in the garden elements that blur the distinction between here and there.
Capture a neighboring vista with these creative techniques
Imagine that you could, without cost, extend your garden out over the surrounding countryside--perhaps to include the meadow next door, even as far as the eye can see. Imagine, too, that while doing so you could incorporate only the picturesque areas, editing out all the rest. No doubt this does sound like a fantasy. But the fact is, you can have all of this if you learn to employ the Japanese art of shakkei, that is "borrowing scenery."
The name may be exotic, but the techniques involved are quite simple. Essentially, what the scenery borrowers do is to select the view that they admire, frame it, and then include in the garden elements that blur the distinction between here and there.
the frame
This is a case where the frame is every bit as important as the picture, for the way in which you capture the view has much to do with making it seem an integral part of your own landscape.
The Japanese, for example, often use hedges to frame a view, but when borrowing scenery they never use a formal hedge. Instead, they use an irregular screen composed of a mixture of different shrubs or trees. The reason for this is that they want the hedge to be unobtrusive. A perfectly clipped rampart of yew will funnel the vision most effectively, but it's liable to catch and hold the eye in the process, keeping the viewer from enjoying the vista.
Another trick of borrowing scenery is to use a frame that suggests a connection between garden and view. For a view of a pine wood, for example, you should consider planting a frame of pine trees. Prune away the lower limbs so that you see the view through the trunks of your own little grove, and you'll feel as though you are already in that wood (see below).
establishing links
The second step in taking possession of a view is to include features within the garden that echo the distant scenery. I saw this trick used to great effect in a garden in Sun Valley, Idaho. The garden itself was just a path that wound among clusters of aspen trees along the flank of a grassy foothill. But everywhere you came upon a view, the owners had set up jagged pinnacles of native granite. Your eye skipped from these "peaks" to the mountain peaks beyond, and you seemed to fly through the whole mountain range.
The Japanese clip evergreen shrubs into rounded mounds to mimic the swells of tree-covered hills, Likewise, they'll set a gnarled dwarf tree to one side of a view to suggest that you aren't just looking at the peak, you are there at the tree-line. Planting your garden with the flora of the region can also link it to the vista. I've landscaped my tiny front yard with tall, tousled grasses and New England meadow flowers to bond it with the neglected (but picturesque) hay field that sweeps up to the state school across the street.
water features
A water feature is the obvious link to include in a garden on the water's edge. Recently I visited a garden on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The swimming pool that sat between house and bay was asymmetric and rounded in profile, lined with dark gray, and edged with a recessed drain so that it seemed as if water was continually welling up and out of it. Who could tell where pool ended and bay began?
Establishing links between garden and view is useful for expanding and enriching your landscape. It also roots your creation into its setting. My hay field looks disheveled at times, but it does speak to the place in which I live.
trees and shrubs with outstanding winter structure
By stripping away foliage, winter exposes the bones not only of the garden but also of deciduous trees and shrubs. Some that seem like mediocrities during the rest of the year emerge as beauties in winter. For example, Corylus avellana 'Contorta', often called Harry Lauder's walking stick, is merely a pillow of foliage from spring through fall; winter, though, reveals the drama of its fantastically twisted branches. Dragon's claw willow (Salix matsudana 'Tortuosa') offers a similar effect on a larger scale. The birches, especially river and black birches (Betula nigra and B. lenta) have a fine-twigged grace, while the weeping forms of the Japanese maples, such as Acer palmatum dissectum 'Ever Red', exhibit almost feminine curves.
A Weeping beech (Fagus sylvatica 'Pendula') Zones 4 to 7; gray-barked weeping tree, 50' to 60' tall
Stewartia (Stewartia pseudocamellia) Zones 5 to 7; multi-trunked, smooth-barked tree 20' to 40' tall; the North's answer to crape myrtles
* River birch (Betula nigra) Zones 3 to 9; fine-twigged tree 40' to 70' tall
Crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica) Zones 7 to 9; large shrub 15' to 25' tall; multiple graceful, smooth-barked trunks
Dragon's claw willow (Salix matsudana 'Tortuosa') Zones 5 to 7; gnarled tree 20' to 30' tall
American hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana) Zones 3 to 9; tree 20' to 30' tall and wide; smooth-barked, gray trunk and limbs
* Flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) Zones 5 to 9; small flat-topped tree to 20'; gray-barked horizontal branches